


Billet Doux

by thedevilchicken



Series: Epistolic [5]
Category: The Following
Genre: M/M, Rough Sex, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-23 00:10:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2526779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part five in the <i>Epistolic</i> series.</p>
<p>Ryan makes good on his bet, and slips a little further.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Billet Doux

"I've let you be my conscience for far too long," Joe says.

Ryan agrees with that assessment without reserve. It's been a burden, reining Joe in all these years. It's taken its toll. It's been the hardest thing he's ever had to do and yet somehow he wouldn't have had it any other way, not even for a second. And now, he knows what he has to do.

He raises the gun. It feels heavy in his hand, cold and familiar. He's tired and he hurts and it all needs to end. Right now. 

He raises the gun and he fires.

***

Ryan liked Naples. It was brilliantly sunny almost the whole time they were there, the seafood was the best he'd ever tasted and there were so many tourists visiting in the heat at the peak of the Italian summer that no one gave a damn about who they were, or who anyone else was. Anonymity would have been impossible back home but in Europe, he and Joe and their great escape had barely even made the news. They just had to be careful how they lived, and whose attention they drew.

It was busy and hot and loud in Naples but still completely different to New York in the summertime; the traffic was just as crazy but in a different way, totally mad on foot but Ryan kind of enjoyed the mania of it when driving. He'd zip around the city in the tiny red Fiat they had on loan, winding his way through the streets and back to the apartment where Joe was usually waiting in the early evening. He'd be sitting out on the balcony that was barely big enough for two cramped chairs and a pint-sized coffee table, watching the busy street below as he sipped a neverending stream of espresso that he'd make throughout the day in the battered stovetop coffee pot. They'd bought the coffee pot new just after they'd arrived and somehow used it almost to destruction in just the last three months, in the airy kitchen just the other side of the balcony door. Sure, neither of them had touched a real drink in years, but Ryan still wasn't sure how that had ever translated to them both practically living on caffeine. 

Their landlady was named Giulia, a cheerful Italian woman in her mid 50s, tall and slender, stylish and really quite beautiful but perpetually guarded beneath her sunny façade. She owned the building they were living in then, including all eight of the apartments that looked so small and run down on the outside but were modern, spacious and actually pretty accommodating to all their needs on the inside. The tiled floors and the shuttered windows helped offset the midday heat and Joe walked around barefoot whenever he was in, tanning more and more each day from the hours upon hours he spent outside, soaking in sun and espresso while he read, and while Ryan worked. He'd look up from his book as Ryan walked in and he'd smile that vague, near-infuriating smile of his over the top of the pages. He'd pull his bare feet down from where they always rested on the second balcony chair and he'd leave his book outside on the table, which Ryan always warned he'd regret but it never did actually rain on it. 

Then, Joe would make coffee and they'd sit in the lounge with the big windows open as the sun went down and Joe read aloud from another book that he was keeping inside as if Ryan might be interested. Sometimes it was like Joe was trying to surreptitiously educate him because while Joe often told him he considered them intellectual equals, he also said it was clear to him that one of them was much more widely read. Ryan would lie back on the couch with his denim-clad legs stretched out over Joe's lap, pretending he wasn't listening as he read, adding in his own inimitable commentary, lively and contentious and almost always tinted with sexuality. Ryan hated to admit he enjoyed it almost as much as Joe did. He was always happy enough to let Joe believe he was the smart one and never once told him he'd read every one of those books. He suspected Joe knew. It was an interesting pretence they had.

Giulia lived on the ground floor with her affectionate ginger cat and spoke terrible English. It turned out Joe spoke pretty good French and Ryan could get by in Spanish if he was absolutely required to and so between the three of them, and a digital dictionary Ryan downloaded on his phone in a moment of inspiration, they somehow managed to communicate when they passed in the hall or she brought them home-cooked meals in the evening. Joe started to put on weight and then started to spend more time working out in the spare room, where they moved in a treadmill it took an hour to get there up the narrow stairs and a bench and set of weights; when he hit after that, he hit harder as a consequence, as Ryan's jaw could confirm. Ryan joined in and in the end, before they left, their Italian hideout had actually been good for their health. 

From time to time, Ryan looked back on those few months with Joe and Giulia with something like affection. But it was really her brother who they spoke with most often. 

Francesco Conti was a _colonnello_ of the carabinieri, the Italian military police, who'd been stationed away when his niece had been reported missing fifteen years earlier. He'd worked tirelessly to locate her, petitioning his superiors and ministers and anyone and everyone who'd potentially listen over and over again, but she'd never turned up, at least not alive; her body was found just over eight years later, miles outside the city in a shallow grave picked over by animals, and he firmly believed that her murder was perhaps the fourth or fifth in a long series committed in the Neapolitan area over the past twenty years. No one else believed that, however, except his sister, and then Ryan came along, met him consulting on a case. He believed. 

They had no evidence of who the guy was except for Lily's list. And in exchange for their assistance, both in keeping Francesco's hands clean and in avenging the death of Giulia's daughter, they were very well taken care of there, rent-free in one of Giulia's apartments. Joe said that was fair; Ryan just hoped they were doing the right thing. He thought they were. And Joe was having a ball there, living Mediterranean city life with gusto, whether it was right or not. Somehow, that counted for something.

Ryan did their due diligence. They never took it on faith that the list was correct, unless the name had come with reliable evidence attached, and this one was always just a name and the city and a handful of victims' details. But, three months in, once he'd prevented a girl's abduction one night outside a nightclub, Ryan had finally been sure, finally had the evidence they needed to press ahead. He phoned Joe and they met in a nearby piazza that was still busy then at nearly 2am, got into the little red Fiat and drove out to the neighbouring village where their unwitting victim lived, out on the outskirts, alone. Joe's relaxed demeanour turned harder as it always did; Ryan's changed to match it. They knew each other and they knew the parts they had to play. 

They walked in, they took him by surprise, and when they left an hour later there was a list of twenty-three women, written in a shaky hand, lying on his bloodied chest for the police to find. He'd kept all of their IDs; the police would find them in a drawer by his bed and they'd see what had happened here, see the laundry list of victims. Francesca Conti had always been one of them; her uncle was up in Milan that night, his alibi secure. 

They left Italy the morning after, reluctant but sure they had to go. They said their stilted goodbyes to a grateful Giulia and soon, they saw three months in Naples had _not_ prepared them for six weeks in Serbia, not at all. What they had to do in Bosnia and Croatia wasn't much more tasteful. Even Joe admitted his hands felt dirty after that, which was quite a feat considering his history. They moved on. They always moved on back then, their stops were temporary.

They spent a winter in Bucharest. It snowed and they spent days and days cooped up in a little apartment with its owners, a couple of native Romanian acquaintances of Ryan's, Carola and her husband Cosmin. Ryan had met them online a couple of years earlier, chatting about the death of Carola's younger sister in an internet support group; after six months or so, he'd been confident enough in the couple's disenchantment to tell them what he knew: her sister had been the second victim of a serial rapist turned killer, one that was there on Lily Gray's list. Carola had actually burst into grateful tears via Skype when she heard what he intended to do. Ryan always warned that revenge might not be a solution, but it did help Carola and Cosmin. When Ryan slit the murderer's throat, in an alley behind a nightclub with Joe looking on, all dark eyes and proud smile, he knew he'd done the right thing. When he told them it was over, their relief was almost tangible. 

Their contact in Munich was a police inspector with a chip on his shoulder who looked at them both like he hated the fact that he needed them. But he _did_ need them, as much as he clearly also hated to admit it. Joe did nothing but antagonise the guy and Ryan did his best to mitigate because okay, perhaps Joe could get away with being a dick to his own followers, but some of Ryan's contacts needed to be handled in a near deferential way that Joe flat-out despised. He was perfectly capable of being civil when it suited him, still had it in him somewhere deep down to be quite charming when he felt so inclined, but Dieter got under his skin and Joe was past the point of maintaining affability where his fellow narcissists were concerned. They were there for a month and every day was a battle to keep Joe from saying that final word that would get them both locked up and then extradited where a lethal injection would probably follow. Joe thought the whole thing was completely fucking hilarious but Ryan was just tired beyond words. 

Sometimes, they travelled separately. Those were the times that Ryan was at his least confident, when his mind wandered to what he'd do or Joe would do if one or both of them were caught ‘cause he was under no illusions that Joe had ever really changed inside; he was held in check by their crazy relationship, by the things Ryan did to keep them together in spite of his vastly better judgement. He did things, awful things, things he wasn't proud of, though he started to struggle to care about that until in the end it was the struggle that bothered him most. 

They spent six months apart more by necessity than design, Joe in Sweden with one of Ryan's contacts and Ryan in Poland with one of Joe's. They wrote letters rather than emailing or phoning because the whole reason they were apart was the FBI had been tracking their activity, had almost found them, had sent local officers for them via Interpol, and they'd needed them thrown off the scent as quickly and efficiently as possible. Contacting their allies hadn't been a possibility with their technological communication blackout and so they'd reluctantly split. And the way that Joe wrote, just like the way he'd written before, it seemed he felt the distance acutely. He wrote love letters, in his own way, in his way that confused sex and death and love and pain and desperation, mixed them up till they were practically inseparable and Ryan guessed in their case they more or less were. 

Ryan, for his part, found everything was too quiet without Joe. He missed the incessant chatter. He missed the knife at his throat.

They worked apart in that time. It wasn't ideal and it wasn't the plan and were he completely honest it was almost unsettling, but there were names that Ryan crossed off the list on his own, and on his own terms. There were three in Poland, one each in Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine. Joe took care of Sweden, Norway and Finland, and another four names. Ryan watched the news sites online for anything else, anything different, signs that Joe had slipped off script, but he found nothing to indicate it. When they came back together in Denmark that summer, once they were sure it was safe, it was like they'd never been apart; Ryan never did work out if Joe had had his own Scandinavian adventure in the meantime or if he'd stuck to their plan, Ryan's plan. 

He didn't ask himself why he hadn't looked harder at what Joe had done in the time they spent apart. He didn't ask why he didn't just ask.

***

Joe enjoyed Paris more than Ryan did. After the first couple of weeks Joe's French was already coming on in leaps and bounds just from talking to their hosts and then he cut his hair, cropped it down close to his scalp to leave less than half an inch of buzz-cut remaining, and with a few weeks' growth of facial hair and the tan he'd somehow maintained through most of the fall and the winter he looked almost like a different person. When he went out, he wore a pair of glasses and spoke with an American accent that sounded somehow more convincing in French than it ever had in English. Joe was in his element. Perhaps especially as their Parisian contacts were fans of his, and he obviously found it greatly amusing that they were all so wary of Ryan.

Sometimes, Ryan took advantage of Joe's new look. In the end, they'd almost made it a game, but the first time was something new that clearly neither had expected. Ryan, ever diligent, had followed Joe that morning, kept his distance as he watched him visit a bookshop to pick up an order, duck into a pharmacy for a couple of minutes, as he bought a French newspaper from a roadside kiosk, as he settled down in the window of a café overlooking a park with a cup of strong coffee and a goddamn croissant. It was still interesting to Ryan to see how Joe chose to spend his time when they were apart, though it was usually fairly mundane. Sometimes he did have to wonder if he really believed Joe was going to do anything rash if he stopped watching over him, or if the truth of it was that he just liked to watch.

Ryan told himself he'd go back to the apartment and leave Joe there but he loitered across the street by the newspaper kiosk by the park for a few minutes longer, trying to puzzle out why he was so reluctant to leave. By the time Joe had finished the croissant, Ryan had crossed the street, narrowly avoiding a speeding scooter, and he still hadn't a clue what he was going to do. He opened the café door and he stepped inside. He walked over to Joe's table, Joe's back to the door and he'd have to speak to him about his security measures later. But that wasn't what he said to him.

"You mind if I join you?" he said instead, slipping into the Australian accent that matched his current passport. 

Joe looked up at him and there was a moment where neither of them knew where this was going to go, or if Joe would even play along. But then he smiled his charming cover smile and gestured to the empty seat opposite him. 

"Sure, go right ahead," he replied. His American accent was still almost painful to Ryan's ears but he gave Joe an easy, lopsided grin and sat himself down opposite. "Can I get you a coffee? A croissant?"

Ryan shrugged. "A coffee would be great, thanks."

Joe signalled a waiter rather expertly and requested, "Deux cafés, s'il vous plaît." Even Ryan knew what that meant. Then Joe folded his copy of _le Canard enchaîné_ and reached a hand across the table. "Jack Cavanaugh," he said. That was _not_ the name on his passport, but Joe had never been slow to invention. "Pleased to meet you."

Ryan took his hand and shook. "Rick Hayes." That _was_ the name on Ryan's, Richard Patrick Hayes from Sydney, Australia. He'd even made himself a couple of years younger.

It was a weird conversation that followed, each of them maintaining an accent that wasn't their own, slipping into new personalities. Jack was an affable American ex-pat from Seattle, politically a little to the left, fluent in French and making a living teaching English to businessmen. Rick was cheerful Aussie taking a year to travel the world as he'd just recovered from a mysterious heart condition and had suddenly been struck with the desire to get out of Australia for the first time in his life. Neither one was married, or had ever been. Neither one was slow to smile or laugh and the conversation was easy, maybe easier for Ryan than when he used his own name. They actually conversed; it wasn't all just Joe's usual monologue. 

They ordered another coffee each, and then another. Time went by quickly, morning turning to afternoon. Jack tried to teach Rick some simple French there at the table, with little success; apparently the only French Rick knew was a really awkwardly pronounced _voulez-vous couchez avec moi_ that made the young couple two tables over raise their brows in their direction. Joe just laughed and gave the two of them an exaggerated wink, turned back to Ryan as he leaned a little closer over the table, his smile muting just a little. 

"Je veux plutôt que tu m'encules, Rick," he said, lowly. "Cet après-midi même. Maintenant." And there was really no mistaking the meaning even if he had no idea what the words actually meant. Ryan sat back in his chair with a laugh, feeling his cheeks flush as he ran a hand through his hair. This was an easy part to play.

"You're flirting with me, Jack," Ryan said, pushing up the sleeves of his long-sleeved t-shirt, trying to look relaxed. He toyed with his watch, glanced back up at Joe then back down at the table to push at the saucer his coffee cup was sitting on. It reminded him so strongly of that night in Joe's house, before they'd known anything about each other.

"Does that bother you?" 

He shrugged and took another sip of his coffee, looking at him over the rim of the cup as he considered that. Did Rick care that Jack was flirting with him? Was that why he'd come into the café in the first place? "Nah, it doesn't bother me. I didn't come all the way to France to play it safe."

Joe chuckled and he finished off his coffee. "So, you're here on an adventure?"

"Yeah, I suppose I am."

"Then you should come with me."

They left together, the young French couple nearby giving them an odd look that clearly had more to do with what they were doing than with who they were; after all, Joe had more trouble being mistaken for Hugh Jackman than he did being recognised as himself. Ryan wrapped his scarf closer around his neck and Joe pulled on a pair of leather gloves as they went out into the street and they walked together, side-by-side against the wind. It wasn't a long walk, maybe fifteen minutes though Ryan wasn't sure he'd be able to find his way back to that café if he needed to, they'd made so many turns down tiny side streets. Then Joe stopped outside a hotel not far from the cimitière de Montmartre, which Ryan found faintly ironic. Joe raised his brows. 

"Okay?" Joe asked. 

Ryan nodded, stepping in closer. He paused a moment, piqued but unsure, before he raised his hand and ran his palm over Joe's prickly jaw, fingers brushing over his ear. A quick glance around to check the coast was clear and he leaned in, leaned up, pressed his mouth experimentally to the corner of Joe's like he'd never done this before, like all of this was new.

"Yeah, okay."

They went inside. It was a fairly good hotel, not exactly cheap but Joe's wallet wasn't lacking in cash, Ryan saw to that. Ryan hung back as Joe checked in and they headed to the elevator, glancing at each other as they rode it up to the fifth floor. Joe had the keycard and let them into the room, made sure it locked behind them. Ryan walked into the room, looked around, stretched, then looked at Joe. Even the way he stood was different.

It was different when they kissed, slower, lighter. The characters they were playing weren't like themselves at all and so that was fine, it was fine that their usual violence and vehemence was lacking. Joe's hands dipped under the back of Ryan's jacket, under the back of his t-shirt and splayed flat against warm skin, no hint of his usual raking nails. Ryan cupped Joe's jaw in his hands, thumbs tracing his cheekbones as they kissed. He tasted of strong French coffee and everything Joe, but everything else seemed different. Ryan pulled back just far enough to look him in the eye, his hands coming to rest at the sides of Joe's neck, his pulse beneath his fingertips.

Joe took off his own glasses, folded them and tossed them into a chair. He did the same with Ryan's. 

"T'as compris ce que je viens de te dire au café, Rick?" he asked. "You understand what I just told you at the café?"

Ryan shook his head. "I told you I don't speak French, Jack."

Joe leaned back in, his mouth by Ryan's ear as he spoke. "I want you to fuck me, Rick," he said, his breath warm, making Ryan shiver with it just as much as the words. "That okay with you?"

Ryan made a breathy little sound of amusement. "Yeah, I think I can just about manage that."

They undressed each other slowly, item by item, tossing them into the chair one after the other, all on top of their glasses though Ryan couldn't say he cared. Joe's hands and Joe's mouth on his skin were like nothing he'd felt and when _Jack_ asked where he'd got the scars, when he traced them with his fingertips, pressed his mouth to them, when he skimmed the raised outline of the pacemaker there at his chest then rested his palm over the scars by his heart the way Joe rarely ever did, like he really didn't know, Ryan made up a story. He'd trusted the wrong guy, but he was better now. He'd learned from it. He was a better judge of character, he said. He'd got past his bad boy phase.

Joe pushed him onto his back on the bed, followed him over and straddled his hips, Ryan's hard cock pressed up against his perineum. Apparently the quick stop at the pharmacy had been for replacement lube; Ryan wouldn't've put it past Joe to just add it to the list for the others to pick up for them but he'd gone in himself and spared them the embarrassment, though everyone there knew what their relationship was. Joe slicked his own fingers then reached back and slicked himself, his gaze not leaving Ryan's for a second as he did it and all Ryan could do was watch him, unable to look away, his pulse quickening. Joe shifted, slicked Ryan's cock pretty thoroughly and then did it again to be sure. And then he shifted again, Ryan's cock in his hand. He sat back, guided him up against him, set his jaw and breathed unsteadily as he pushed down and took the whole length of him in. Ryan's hands went to Joe's hips. Joe's hands went to Ryan's chest. They looked at each other; neither one seemed to know what to make of it. It had never been like this.

"Rick, I want to tell you a secret," Joe said, his voice strained as he shifted his hips against him. "I'm not who I said I am." He flexed the muscles in his thighs, shifting again, rocking against him. "I'm not even American." He leaned a little more weight through his hands against Ryan's chest, his awful accent dropping away, suddenly back to familiar English. "My name's Joe, Rick. Joe Carroll. You might have heard of me."

Ryan's hands tightened a fraction at Joe's hips as he considered his next move, considered where exactly Joe was taking this. "I know who you are, Joe," he said, keeping his Aussie accent securely in place. "We've got TVs in Australia and I'm not a complete arsehole." He moved one hand up, fingers running slowly over Joe's thigh, lingering at the scar at the juncture of thigh and abdomen as he looked up and met his gaze again. Then he ran his fingertips over the length of Joe's cock and wrapped his hand around it. "Why'd you tell me that?"

Joe shrugged as he ground down against him, the rocking of his hips settling into a slow, rolling rhythm. "You remind me of someone I used to know," he said. "An old friend. An ex-lover."

"Ryan Hardy," Ryan said. 

"Ryan Hardy," Joe confirmed. 

They continued in silence for a moment, Ryan starting to flex his hips upwards, knees bent just a few degrees to find leverage against the bed. Joe's skin was flushed, his eyes dark, the winter sun through the plain net curtain at the window setting out each contour of his body in stark relief. It was like seeing him for the first time. Ryan felt sick; he felt vibrant, enthralled.

"I didn't mean to kill him," Joe said. "It was an accident, you understand. There was so much blood I couldn't clean it off the knife, and I have some experience with that kind of thing." He took a breath to steady himself, still watching Ryan who had no earthly idea where he was going with this. "It broke my heart." Another breath, leaning down still more heavily against Ryan's chest. "Rick, if you pretend you're him for me now, if you do a good job, I promise I won't kill you."

It was _such_ a stretch to get to this, leaps in suspension of disbelief, and for a moment Ryan almost called it quits and left the room. But he was in this. He was confused and unsettled and he was hopelessly turned on by this. Joe looked at him expectantly, like he almost expected him to walk away but dared him to continue anyway. And so Ryan moved, sharply, dragged Joe over to his back and hooked Joe's calves over his shoulders as he pushed back inside him, deep and hard.

"Is that what you want?" he asked, his voice harsh as he dropped the accent abruptly, as he dropped the almost naive charm he'd cultivated. He knew his expression had changed, too, from that easy smile to something harder, almost a frown, hotter, darker. One hand gripped Joe's thigh, the other going down to press the head of Joe's cock down against his stomach. "Am I what you want, Joe?"

Joe gasped in a breath, his hands going up to brace himself against the headboard as Ryan fucked him harder. He nodded tensely, his hips working, biceps taut. He made no other reply but he didn't have to. What he wanted was clear. He wanted Ryan, unfettered, unrestrained.

It couldn't last much longer, going at that intensity, with that urgency to it, Ryan letting himself go. Ryan stroked Joe hard until he came with a shudder, muscles so tight it almost looked painful. Ryan was right after, a few more thrusts before he pulled out and came over Joe's belly. He sat back on his heels between Joe's thighs, trying to steady his breath before he turned and stretched out on his back, hot, sweaty, their shoulders touching. He didn't know if he should feel awkward or not as the seconds of silence stretched out into minutes and his skin cooled almost to the point of shivering.

"Not a bad effort, Rick," Joe said, at last, as he propped himself up on his side. He patted Ryan's chest with one hand. "A tad melodramatic but it would seem a shame to kill you over that." 

He left the bed, wiping himself off as he stepped over to their pile of discarded clothing, and glanced back at Ryan over his shoulder, casting an almost critical eye over him before he started to dress. Ryan watched him do it, not ready to make a move himself. "Do find me again sometime, won't you." He pulled on his jacket, buttoned it, turned for the door. "I've enjoyed meeting you."

He left. Ryan stayed there, took a shower, dressed, wondering how the fuck he'd gotten himself into this, wondering how he was going to look at Joe when he got back to the apartment. He took the metro three stops down the line and walked back, slowly, winding his way through the streets. When he saw Joe in the kitchen, chatting with a couple of the others as if nothing abnormal had happened at all, he decided then what he'd do: he'd put this away and go on just as before but he'd bring it all out again every now and then, just while they were still in Paris. Maybe next time the story would change; they had a dozen identities left with which to explore their own. Or maybe next time Ryan would be the one to play himself.

They spent Christmas there in the big shared apartment in Montmartre. Sophie, a cheerful girl barely as old as Joe and Ryan's mutual acquaintance was, put up a Christmas tree because she thought it might help them feel at home. Marie-France, the older one, the more sombre one, helped to decorate it and even seemed pleased with the result. Stefan was from Switzerland and spoke four languages; he helped Philippe, the twenty-something sous-chef, with all their meals - he cooked on Christmas day, did turkey and stuffing ‘cause that was what Joe told them the British ate for Christmas. Guillaume was Stefan's lover, a mid-level agent of the Police Nationale's judicial arm who fed them information, though there was rarely anything to report back then. They all had jobs and seemed like such normal, average, productive members of French society, but they came home every evening to talk with Joe like he had all the answers they lacked in life. They hung on his every word, whether he spoke in French or English.

For the first couple of weeks they were there, Ryan kept a close eye on Joe. He didn't have a great track record where cults were concerned and Ryan tried to make sure he wasn't regressing, taking over, modelling the little group into something Ryan just couldn't allow; he guessed that was how he'd ended up tailing him in the first place. But, as much as Joe seemed to enjoy the attention he was getting, he still showed a startling amount of private contempt for his followers. He purposely, purposefully kept them as uninvolved in - and unaware of - their plans as he could manage without arousing suspicion, careful to charm them into believing they had everything they needed from him, that he was giving them everything they wanted, everything they'd always lacked. It was intriguing to watch him work in close quarters like that, to see how he managed to instil such loyalty with those little touches of personal attention here and there, recalling little details they told him about their lives, every conversation a manipulation, every move calculated. Ryan wondered how many of the tactics he saw in Joe then had been tried on him over the years, but then he and Joe would retire to their room at the end of the night and as the weeks ticked by, turned to two months then three, Joe would be so tired that every scrap of pretence fell away as he closed the door behind them. He didn't need to charm Ryan. Ryan knew him, and asked nothing from him. Joe hid nothing, because he knew he didn't have to.

When three months turned to four, Joe started to turn irritable and no amount of coffee sipped in cafés on rainy days, illicit liaisons with Ryan's endless alter-egos or dark romances read on the banks of the Seine could relieve him of that irritability. Ryan watched it happen, as the smiles became more forced, and he knew it was time to move on. They'd crossed off a fourth name from the list by the end of that week and they said their farewells to the strange collection of followers there in Montmartre. Joe wanted to kill them all, argued for it even as they were getting into the car, pulling away from the apartment, even as they were leaving Paris. He wanted them gone, wanted _all_ of them gone, everyone who'd ever read his book and thought he could answer their questions as a consequence. As much as Ryan disliked each and every one of them, mistrusted them implicitly, he said they might be useful again in future. 

They left and they left them unharmed, still worshipping the ground on which Joe walked.

***

And then, London. 

They settled in the north of the city, in another of Lily Gray's expensive, expansive homes, one of two they knew of just in London. There were names on the list from all over Europe and though they were scheduled to move on from there after the first couple of weeks, Joe had seemed so at home in the city and the house and himself that Ryan sat down to remake their plans. It was risky but he guessed it was all risky, and London was maybe the best place to avoid all personal contact in the entire UK, maybe the best place to make a more permanent base for themselves. No one ever seemed to look either of them in the eye, which suited them just fine. 

They took a couple of weeks to settle, speaking with Ryan's contacts to make sure this could work. Ryan had three contacts in the British police, two at Scotland Yard and one down in Portsmouth, then two customs officers and assorted public administrators with amazing general powers of obfuscation by paperwork. Some were paid but most he could count on more solidly than that. When he looked at it, he thought they'd be able to do this, get in and out of the country when needed, continue to go under the radar with a little help from their friends, since their friends were almost legion. So they settled in to learn the quirks of the house, the right setting so the shower wasn't hot enough to melt flesh from bone, the books in the study Joe might want to read or reread, entrance and exit points so they could plan for the worst. The place was in an area just expensive enough that their neighbours didn't care who they were as long as they left them alone behind their tall garden walls and gates with electronic passcodes. Lily had chosen well. 

Weeks turned into months. Joe ordered new furniture now and then, started making the place his own, full of oak and dark patterns that looked like a photograph of an old Edwardian townhouse. Ryan didn't care because Joe looked comfortable there; he hadn't forgotten that this was the city where Joe had grown up. He didn't push for the details because it didn't matter, he knew who Joe was even if he never chose to fill in the few final blanks, but on occasion he'd talk about his parents, the bookshelf in his father's study, their regular holidays in France that explained his good if initially rusty French language skills. He mentioned an au pair who his parents hired to help with his French before their holidays; she was blonde and pretty and he'd thought things about her that he'd known for a fact that he shouldn't. Ryan shifted closer on the couch as Joe talked, toyed with the hem of Joe's t-shirt, slipped his hand down under the waist of his pyjama pants and let his fingers curl around his cock. Joe kept on talking, narrated the story of what he'd wanted to do to her even when Ryan started to stroke him slowly. He teased him with his palm and the pad of his thumb till gasps interrupted his story and his hips squeezed up against Ryan's hand. Once upon a time, Ryan would have stopped his mouth with his own so he'd just shut the fuck up and stop talking; now he wanted to listen.

Months stretched into years. It was tiring, and it was constantly fucking weird to wake up in bed next to Joe every morning when back home that had only been once a month at best. In the beginning he'd wondered if this was going to be the end of them because God knew Joe was a dickish, narcissistic son of a bitch and dealing with him on a daily basis could get really fucking annoying really quickly. Luckily, it didn't, it never had. The domesticity of it all, that Ryan thought could make or break them, had somehow actually _made_ them. They cheated and hired a maid, someone they could trust, and so Joe had time to read and they talked over the television in the evening, sometimes Ryan even got a word in edgewise, if he liked. Joe wasn't a bad cook, and he liked to talk while he did it; Ryan chopped vegetables sometimes and tried not to think of all the things they could do to each other, had done to each other, with the knives he used. 

Of course, nothing was ever _normal_ between them - Joe got off on knifeplay, tracing patterns on Ryan's bare skin though sometimes he'd raise blood and sometimes not, and Ryan had found he liked it best when Joe wrapped his hands around his neck and squeezed till he could barely breathe. Joe found that hilarious until he was doing it and then seemed to understand the attraction. The weird thing was really how careful Joe was when he did it, like he was concerned about what it could do to Ryan's heart if they went too far. Joe actually lectured him about looking after himself on occasion, and started working out with him like they'd done back in Naples just to make sure he was getting enough exercise. He made him go over to a private clinic outside Zurich for regular check-ups on his pacemaker, in spite of the risk of capture they ran in doing it. It was pretty fucking weird to think that Joe actively wanted to keep him alive. Joe actually cared, though he'd never really said it. Neither of them had.

Sometimes, he missed their life back in New York and knew without asking that Joe did, too. They'd worked hard to build a reputation; Ryan had worked hard to bring it all together for Joe so that it looked like a simple case of synchronicity to cover the hours and days and months of work he'd put into it behind the scenes, work he still continued though without the same sort of secrecy. But when they killed together, it was obvious that this was right. He'd done the right thing. He'd kept Joe in check by keeping him happy, though sometimes he wondered if this was even close to what either of them had wanted or if he'd done it just because he could, because he'd said he would when he'd made that bet. All he knew was Joe wouldn't have been contained forever if he'd stayed there in federal prison, and this way he was. He was regulated. Ryan told himself that was important. He told himself that meant everything.

They were in London when Joe finally hit 50. They drove down to Brighton that morning and crossed off another name from the list, in a farmhouse outside the city, making it look for all the world like a suicide by hanging ‘cause in the end creativity was the only way they'd keep on getting away with it. Then they took a room in a hotel in the city itself; Ryan was still using a forged South African passport and a bad South African accent to go with it that made Joe smirk at him as they checked in. They'd already screwed in the Range Rover with the tinted windows that almost reminded Ryan of the SUVs he'd used to drive back home, and all they did was stretch out on the bed, neither one of them mentioning the fact it was Joe's 50th birthday. Ryan was four years older, not that age was something they ever discussed. They ordered room service from a menu that looked like a nightmare even Heston Blumenthal wouldn't venture into, and then Ryan gave Joe his gift. 

They'd been married for five years and never even owned rings until then, let alone worn them. Joe laughed at him, just like Ryan had known he would, but after they'd finally scrubbed the remaining blood from each other's skin, Joe put on the ring while Ryan wasn't watching and barely ever took it off again. Ryan wore his on a chain round his neck and sometimes Joe pressed down on it until it left an imprint, sometimes a bruise in the middle of his chest. 

Ryan never stopped him. 

***

By the time five years had passed since the escape, they'd settled into their new life. It was easy by then, a routine they'd established, exercise and study and play, trips for their work and Joe still talking all day, every day, because even though they'd had _years_ of this, he still hadn't run out of commentary. Ryan doubted he ever would, and still couldn't see himself tiring of it. It was like a direct window into Joe's head and he was _still_ fascinated by what he found there. It was endlessly fascinating to see that Joe was just like him.

Ryan hadn't planned past the end of the list. Frankly, he'd believed all along that they'd both be caught or killed before that happened and then there they were, standing over a bloody corpse in a hotel Vladivostok and it was all over, list complete, every name neatly crossed out, done. It was finished and he had no plan for what came next, nothing. 

They made their way back across Russia, ducked down through Lithuania and spent a couple of strange, distant days in Prague saying next to nothing to each other before heading back to London. Joe was strangely silent throughout, or at least silent for Joe because he didn't stop talking, there was just a marked difference in the tone and timbre of what he said. Ryan actually felt awkward, like he'd failed somehow, like he should've known better all along, like his plans for Joe had sputtered out sadly. Then they pulled into the garage of the house back there in London, zapped down the garage door and Joe looked at him darkly from the passenger seat. 

"So," he said. "What now?"

Ryan shrugged. "We get on with our lives?" He had no idea what that meant.

"We left those in New York, Ryan. I can only assume you're not suggesting we go back and face the music."

Ryan just shrugged again and left the car abruptly, shoved the door closed behind him with a bang. He'd always closed off the thought of what came next when he came to it. Maybe that was what they should do. He had no idea. 

Joe followed him into the house, close behind him. They came out into the kitchen and Joe caught Ryan's wrist, pulled him round, came in closer. 

"Don't tell me you did all of this for me," he said, like he could read Ryan's mind. 

"You think I did this for _me_?"

Joe paused for a second then he shoved him full in the chest, sending him reeling backwards; he pushed him again before he could stabilise and Ryan hit the floor, hard, sprawling. Then Joe was on him, on his knees astride his thighs, shaking him by the shoulders, Ryan's head bouncing off the tiled floor over and over. Ryan let him do it, too drained to argue, utterly exhausted, until Joe stopped abruptly and slapped him hard across the face. Then he slapped him again before he sat back on his heels, his breath unsteady. The fingers of both hands closed on Ryan's shirt, pulling it taut as he looked down at him. 

"You would have been enough for me without this," he said, the comment completely incongruous and perfectly on point at the exact same time. 

Ryan's insides twisted sickly. "Yeah," he agreed. "Until I wasn't."

And there it was, the motive Ryan had never known he'd had. It stung him, worse than the shock of Joe's palm across his cheek. He'd been keeping Joe busy so there'd be no cracks, no lapses where Joe reverted to previous form and rendered the life they had irrelevant. And now there they were, thousands of miles from home, and the life it turned out they'd both wanted had been left there in pieces. They couldn't have it back. They should never have left. There should never have been any doubt at all.

"The last person who tried to fix me did end up dead," Joe had told him one night, when the topic turned that way somehow, as close as they ever came to discussing what this was between them. Ryan's hand skimmed down over Joe's stomach as they lay there in the hotel bed, Stockholm or Oslo or at least somewhere Scandinavian but the cities had all blurred together after a while. The side of his pinkie finger rested against the base of Joe's cock, rubbing idly, almost as if he didn't mean to do it though he rarely did anything he didn't mean. Joe had pretended not to notice though it was hard to ignore how he hardened at his touch. 

"I'm not trying to _fix_ you," Ryan replied. "I know better." Joe reached back, his hand at the back of Ryan's neck as they lay there, Ryan's chest against Joe's back, the inside of one of Ryan's thighs resting against Joe's hip. Sometimes the position made Joe uncomfortable, the possessiveness of it, but Ryan always persisted because he knew exactly what Joe liked. Sometimes, he liked to be possessed. Sometimes, he'd let Ryan bend him down over the kitchen table or toy with his prostate with his fingertips while they showered, laughing as he pushed back against him. Sometimes, just like that, Ryan bit down at his shoulder and pushed inside him. Ryan should've known even then that he'd misread this. He'd meddled with Joe's life so often that he didn't know how _not_ to try to fix him. He'd been doing exactly that all along. Joe had let him.

Joe clenched his jaw; Ryan watched as the muscle worked, just lying there on the kitchen floor. He felt sick and disappointed and disappoint _ing_ as Joe looked at him, his expression somehow unreadable, nothing like Ryan had ever seen on him before, dark and hot and impenetrable. Joe leaned forward, still holding Ryan's gaze. One hand closed over Ryan's throat, deliberate. He squeezed. 

"You think you know me so well, don't you," Joe said. Ryan just about managed a breath but not an answer. "Don't be an idiot, Ryan. Do you really think I _needed_ this?" He leaned closer. "I needed _you_. It's been fun, but everything else was a bonus."

He pressed down harder; Ryan struggled to breathe as he watched him. 

" _I love you_ , Ryan, you monumental clot. You didn't need to run me around Europe to make sure I wouldn't stray."

Ryan's hands found Joe's thighs, his hips. Joe's free hand joined the other at Ryan's throat, thumbs pressing in over his windpipe, then snaked down, pressing down over the front of Ryan's jeans. They were neither of them surprised to find Ryan was hard. 

Joe let him breathe but only for as long as it took to flick open the button at the waist of Ryan's jeans and pull them down, yanking his jeans and boxers over his hips, and following with his own. He caught his own cock and Ryan's in one hand and leaned back in, his palm over Ryan's throat as he started to stroke. His thumb rubbed over the head of Ryan's cock and he gasped in a breath, fingers clawing at Joe's hips. He couldn't think. He didn't want to.

It didn't last long. Joe was mad and Ryan was flummoxed and they came almost simultaneously, not sure whose orgasm sparked the other's. Joe moved his hand from Ryan's throat and he gasped in a breath. Joe slumped down to the floor beside him. Joe was right; all they needed was each other.

"Tell me you love me," Joe said, demanded, his voice low and hard. He wasn't looking at him, like he couldn't. 

Ryan laughed breathlessly, his gaze on the ceiling, unsteady. "I left everything behind for this," he said. "I really need to say it?"

"You need to say it," Joe confirmed. "It's not for me, Ryan. You need to hear yourself say it."

Ryan closed his eyes. He took a breath, his heart still hammering from what had gone before or maybe just from this. His throat would be bruised in the morning, but that was hardly unusual. And he meant to say it, he really did. It was right there and it had been for years, he guessed, in the back of his mind, fucked up as that was. He hated that they'd ever met and resented what they'd done to each other, what they'd both become because of each other, this co-dependent fucking ecstasy that was the life they shared. It made him sick to think of how he'd changed because of Joe and just how easy it had been, because he guessed it had been there all along and really, Joe, well, Joe was just the catalyst. 

He felt it, overwhelmingly. But he couldn't say the words. He wished like hell that Joe hadn't said them, either. And Joe could barely look at him afterwards. 

The phone call didn't come until it was almost too late the following day. Joe was reading in the conservatory in his usual spot there in a large leather armchair while Ryan somehow feigned interest in West Ham vs Newcastle playing on the television. And the phone rang, the one they didn't use, the one that no one knew the number for, except for one person and one person only. Ryan turned off the TV and looked at Joe who was looking at him like their argument just didn't matter anymore. This was more important. 

"Mike."

"Get out, Ryan," Mike said. "They're coming."

For as long as they'd been in London and maybe even longer, Ryan had had an exit plan. He'd always known it was going to come to this, even if he'd hoped almost desperately that it wouldn't. It was time to leave. 

"We've gotta go," Ryan said, pocketing the phone in case Mike needed to call again. Joe closed his book. 

"The FBI?"

"Yeah."

"Right now?"

"Right now."

They had bags ready, sports bags, one each, in the trunk of their second Range Rover in the garage, the one they kept in service just for a moment like this. They scooped up wallets and phones and keys and then they heard the garage door opening before they could get any closer to gone. 

"Hardy?"

"Mendez?"

Joe sighed, as if he knew exactly how this was all going to end, as if it were all a foregone conclusion. Mendez stepped into the kitchen and into sight. 

"It's over, Ryan," Mendez said. "The Brits are on the way. You can't get out."

"Really?" Joe said. He raised a gun and he pointed it at Mendez. "We're leaving, Gina. Stand down." She stood her ground and he raised his brows. "Stand down or I'll shoot you. Do you really think I don't mean it?"

"Don't do it, Joe," Ryan said, taking a step toward him. "Put it down."

Joe smiled wryly. "Really?" He waved his gun in Mendez's general direction. " _Really_?" He laughed, shaking his head, somewhere between hysterics and despair. "I thought I knew you better than this, Ryan. I thought we understood each other."

Mendez flicked off the safety on her sidearm and settled into a balanced stance as she levelled the gun at Joe. She was ready and everything was spiralling out of control. It was all unravelling, faster than Ryan could ever have expected. 

***

It was raining the day he broke Joe out of jail. It had started around 4am while he was too damn pumped to sleep and continued in a thin but drenching drizzle until well past the time they made their escape. When they boarded the plane they were both soaked to the skin and shivering with it but they didn't dry out until their pilot finally confirmed they'd left US airspace, and even then neither of them really relaxed too much. They towelled off and changed clothes, still tense though the thrill of it lingered, in the background. They'd done it. 

Joe was bleeding from his thigh where a bullet had grazed him and Ryan felt like he needed a drink, for the first real time in years, almost to the point of raiding the overstocked minibar. As it was, he used a couple of miniature vodkas to clean Joe's bleeding leg and tried not to think that hell, once an addict, always an addict. Were he completely honest, and he felt then like he hadn't been in years, he'd just replaced alcohol with Joe Carroll as his drug of choice. It was no less intoxicating and not exactly any healthier. 

It was raining when they touched down in Venezuela. Joe had changed out of his prison clothes but his wound was bleeding through the gauze and the bandage that Ryan had put there, bleeding through his jeans, though really it was far from fatal and the damage was vastly more obvious in his odd mood. He cycled between pissed and elated from one moment to the next, which made Ryan smirk and that just pissed Joe off even more, but also somehow made him more upbeat, too. It was brilliant entertainment. Ryan needed it, considering everything and everyone that he'd just left behind. Quite literally the only thing he had at that moment was Joe and the clothes on his back, and all the plans he'd made. If he thought about it too hard he'd feel sick to his stomach, not sure if that was just residual excitement or something altogether less pleasant than that.

They made their way from the small airfield somewhere west of Maracaibo out toward the coast and closer to the border with Colombia. There was a house there, and an elderly Venezuelan couple who both spoke perfect English waiting to welcome them in. The estate overlooking the sea had belonged to Lily Gray but had stood completely empty since her death and really, it was only fitting that the two of them wind up there, at least to start with. Not that they'd got there by chance. Everything that could be planned, Ryan had planned it. 

It was a beautiful house. Once the rain had cleared and Joe had temporarily ceased all melodramatic bitching over his leg, they explored the place and its grounds, leafed through books and sat together by the cliff edge overlooking the water below. It was a long way down, dizzying, so far to fall and all it would take was one false step. Ryan tried not to take it as a metaphor for their current situation, precarious as it was despite his planning. There were too many variables for him to control them all with perfect efficacy. So, he turned to Joe as they sat there, turned away from the drop and forced down his nausea, and he told him the plan instead. 

They hadn't been able to discuss it at all before the jailbreak had actually taken place, but Ryan had known that Joe knew to be ready when he'd sent a letter that signed off _see you soon_ \- his next visit wasn't due for nearly three weeks and Joe had no court appearances booked in, and so it _had_ to be this. Joe had known that he was planning it, planning to break him out of a federal prison like a complete fucking lunatic and finally burn all his bridges just the way he'd always said he couldn't, and all because that had been the bet hanging between them. Three years before, he'd been there in the prison, in the less than hospitable and probably less than sanitary conjugal suite, and when Joe complained that Max still loathed him and Mike wasn't exactly much better, Ryan made the bet: _you ever get a kind word from those two and I'll break you out to celebrate_.

It was just a sarcastic comment at first, offhand, flippant. But he'd looked at Joe and Joe had looked at him and Ryan could see the wheels turning. He could feel his own response to Joe's sparked imagination because he knew what he was thinking and it was such a goddamn turn-on that suddenly, unexpectedly, he meant every word. He'd do it; if he met the conditions, if Mike and Max, Mike _and_ Max together and not separately, ever uttered a grateful word, a kind word, a word of commiseration or appreciation or hell, maybe he'd even accept plain civility, he'd do it. He'd break him out and they'd leave together, rest of the world be damned. He was already making long-term plans even then, plans for their future, necessarily secretive plans, and so factoring in just one more variable didn't seem like an issue, even if it was fucking nuts and he knew it. His contingencies had contingencies, after all. And maybe, just maybe, Joe would be the better for it. 

He told him the plan, because he'd wanted to tell him all along, every step of the way. Joe seemed cheerful to be free but nonplussed to have left the US, probably felt suckered into agreeing to live the life that Lily Gray had planned for him but with Ryan instead of her because hell, they were living in her house, they'd used her ideas for the escape. And then there was the fact that Ryan had only just revealed his plans for them, the list of killers and his plans for _them_ , and even aside from that, Joe had had a life back there, albeit a life that Ryan had helped him to construct to hide his true intentions. Ryan just had to show him that he had bigger plans than that, that this new life would be better than the one they'd left behind. In the beginning, he honestly believed that was true. He'd just never considered that maybe it was the _idea_ of escape that Joe liked and he didn't need the reality. Maybe what they'd had really was enough.

But Joe smiled when he finally understood. In the end, he didn't take too much convincing.

There were twenty-seven names on the list Ryan got from the estate of Lily Gray. Twenty-seven names _in North America_ , that was. They wouldn't be staying too long there in Venezuela, because they had business elsewhere; twenty-seven names barely scratched the surface when you looked at it globally.

They were in Venezuela for just over three months. That was part of the plan, though Joe was clearly going stir crazy by the end of it; they were lying low, but not so low that the right people couldn't get wind of it, just close enough to the radar that it put ideas in people's heads that maybe all they had in mind was a quiet life in South America, out of sight, out of contact, out of mind. Sure, the escape had to have pissed people off, but in the scheme of things at least they were off US soil. They were someone else's problem, as much as it needled certain egos and likely pissed Max off that no one cared about catching them but her. 

He hadn't told Max because she'd already thought he was a total fucking maniac, but he'd told Mike everything and he'd got it, accepted it, understood. Hell, Mike would've come with them if Ryan had asked, and he'd thought seriously about asking because Mike was just like him. 

Then, just over three months past their arrival, they spent four days in Caracas. They crossed the first name off the list while they were there, much to the old Venezuelan couple's relief on behalf of their long-dead granddaughter, and then boarded a cargo ship heading for Africa. The right amount of cash could get them anything and anywhere, so Ryan was finding, and he did have the cash. His book sales had helped, but most of it had come from his creative planning; he'd spent months, _years_ , putting this together, building contacts, negotiating, and that was just to get the goddamn list. And then, once he had it, all the names and all the details sitting in a file on his laptop, as secure as Max could make it without him ever telling her what it was, he'd started the rest of the work, just in case. He planned for Joe's escape and what their lives would be after, while they worked.

Lily Gray had had money. She'd had accounts all over the world, some of them buried so deep inside layers upon layers of shell companies and shady banking regulations that they were virtually untraceable. Ryan had given up tracing them; he knew they existed, so went ahead and he asked the right people the right questions. He asked them at gunpoint. He asked them with a table spread with compromising photographs and computer records. He extorted hundreds of thousands of dollars and felt not the least bit guilty for any of it. He was planning for their future, at least as far ahead as the end of the list.

"You were busy while I was away," Joe said, one night on the ship, once he'd finished complaining about the state of the mattress and the rust-coloured water in the bathroom. He was leafing through a stack of forged passports he'd found in Ryan's backpack while ostensibly searching for toothpaste, in spite of the rust-coloured water. Joe raised his brows just a fraction higher with every name he read, every photograph he saw. "Do I look like a Giuseppe to you?" He flipped to the photo page of the next. " _Sepp_? Yusuf? You _do_ realise you've called me Joe in six different languages." 

Ryan realised. He just didn't think passports were going to matter too much to them with their contacts and besides, Joe was always going to be Joe; he might as well keep his name to some extent, along with the inimitable rest of him.

They came into the port autonome de Dakar in the west of Senegal, and they didn't stay. Dakar in summer was too goddamn hot; two days later they'd transferred ships and were heading south around the west coast of Africa. Cape Town and Johannesburg were so bright they both practically lived in sunglasses for the three weeks they were there. Tunis and Algiers in the north seemed like another world completely. Joe decided he hated the entire continent after seeing four countries, being too hot, always covered in a sheen of sweat that made their clothes stick awkwardly, while Ryan argued that was probably because they'd chosen summer to cross the Atlantic. They showered together in the hotel back in Dakar for the second time, the water cool and Ryan's hands on Joe's slick skin seeming to calm him somehow, but he wanted to leave and Ryan couldn't say no after they'd dispatched all three names they had on the list for the African continent. 

Back on a ship and they headed around the west coast of Spain, up to Santander where they swapped into a waiting car and drove a couple of hours east into Bilbao. Two years later, after months spent spread all over continental Europe, they came back to that same place, that same port in Bilbao, and there was another ship waiting, another voyage to start. Joe somehow managed to complain for pretty much the entire journey about the time he'd been on a school trip to Brittany and the ferry crossing had been so choppy almost everyone there was seasick. Ryan hadn't forgotten that Joe had grown up in England but he was getting more and more obvious about it the closer they came. 

They disembarked in Portsmouth in the middle of the night and Joe actually looked pleased for the first time in weeks. The air was markedly cooler there and Ryan had to admit that matters were simplified greatly by actually understanding the language in a meaningful way and not just in disjointed snippets. A customs officer called Darren gave them a furtive look and walked them off the ship, then out of the port without anyone even checking a passport, out into a parking lot where he handed over a set of keys. He was one of Joe's eclectic overseas fans and Ryan hadn't been sure if this would work, but Darren managed to keep himself from asking for an autograph right up until they were settling into the beaten up old Mini and Joe signed his copy of _The Gothic Sea_ through the car window, trying his best to put on a grateful look though Ryan could see the cracks around the edges. They were both tired, Ryan still felt like he had sand in his hair from the winds that were whipping Bilbao and it would've been so easy to ask Darren to find them a safe place to spend the night, but he just didn't trust the guy. And they had a way to go yet. 

It took three and a half hours to get into London. They'd somehow got stuck on the M25, Joe cursing an entertaining blue streak about London traffic and Ryan's inability to fully comprehend the intricacies of driving on the opposite side of the road from the rest of Europe, until they pulled off at a service station and switched seats so Joe was driving. It was an entirely strange experience, Joe driving, and it wasn't really until right then, years after the fact, that the enormity and idiocy and general insanity of what they'd done had really hit him. He'd really done it. Joe was out, Ryan had done it and then he'd mailed all the evidence of _how_ he'd done it and who'd helped him to Max at the FBI because he'd told himself that was the right thing to do, as if right mattered anymore. And now, he was taking Joe home. Now, there they were arguing over who got to drive. 

He had a worldwide network in place, selected for their particular skills and for the depth to which he thought they could be trusted. Some were mercenaries, who'd be just as loyal as his money could buy. Some were Joe's overseas adepts, strange and often vaguely scary people - though _scary_ was a relative term considering his usual company - that Ryan really wanted nothing to do with but who did often prove useful. But the majority were Ryan's contacts, not quite a following in the way Joe's cult had been but there was something unique there, something quite powerful. It was victims' families and pissed local cops who looked at the system and saw it was broken the way Ryan did; they hadn't needed much in the way of manipulation because they didn't care who did the killing as long as the villains paid in the end. They'd had all the help they'd needed, everywhere they went. They'd always have help as long as they were in the business of revenge.

It was one thing to know he was doing the right thing for the victims and their families. It was another to believe he'd done the right thing for Joe. As he stood there in the kitchen at the end of everything, gun in hand, he had to wonder if he'd _ever_ done the right thing. Then he wondered if that mattered at all.

***

"I've let you be my conscience for far too long," Joe says. And Ryan agrees. 

He's tried so hard to be a good man, to do the right thing, telling himself that as long as the people they kill deserve to die then that's fine, that's good, that's fair. He's rationalised it every step of the way, even knowing the first and only thing he should've done when he got hold of that list was to turn it over to the Bureau. He guesses more people died because he didn't, more innocent victims. But he kept it, and he guesses that was the point of no return. That was the first completely irreversible action. 

He raises his gun. He points it at Joe and he means to fire, he really does. But Joe looks so fucking _disappointed_ and suddenly, he knows he can't do it. Suddenly, he sees so clearly that he could _never_ do it. He is who he is because of Joe. And in spite of everything, he doesn't resent that.

He turns the gun on Mendez and he fires. The shot takes her down to the floor, the bullet in her neck; he closes the gap between them as she gasps in a breath and before she can breathe again, he puts a bullet in her head. He doesn't hesitate. The calm of it as she dies on the floor is strangely liberating. 

_The right thing_ is so arbitrary as to be meaningless; he steps beyond it and meets himself there at last. This is the last irreversible action. 

And then, he turns to Joe. 

"What now?"

Joe smiles. He lights up because in this moment, all is forgiven. All is yet to come. For the first time, they really are the same.

"I have a plan," Joe says. 

They leave together. It's Joe's turn to lead, and Ryan will follow him.

**Author's Note:**

> The only French translation you might need is for _Billet Doux_ : that's French for _love letter_.
> 
> If you've read this far, and read comments on previous parts, you'll know that I intended this to be the final one. There'll actually be one more coming, a much shorter one, to finish this beast off!


End file.
